The Secret to Breathing
by gotwingsbaby
Summary: What if Lorelai hadn't run away with Rory in Red Light on the Wedding Night? What if it took her a little longer to figure things out?
1. Confessions of a Diner Owner

author's notes: just that I do not own the Gilmore girls or any of that and it applies for all chapters after too.

Chapter One- Confessions of a Diner Owner

Lorelai stepped into _Luke's_ despite the closed sign hanging in the window the night before her wedding after having left her daughter back at home with the claim that she needed a little time to herself on her last night as a single woman. She'd set out on foot to try to walk off the slowly growing feeling that her diaphragm was failing to force the air into her lungs. The fact that she wound up in the diner came as no surprise to her; a large portion of her time and paycheck was invested in those familiar walls. Not to mention the time and energy she'd invested into befriending and the tedious task of pulling off the tough layers that made up the proprietor and his personality. It was easily her favorite hang-out, something pretty much every one of her fellow townsfolk knew, and sliding onto her usual stool next to the cash register made the task of getting a full breath suddenly easier.

Having heard the bells jingle merrily into the stillness of the long empty diner, Luke came out from the kitchen with his hands in a towel, rubbing the grease and harsh cleaners from his fingertips.

"The diner's closed," he said.

"I know," she replied.

"I've already cleaned the grill."

"I'm still full from all the crap Rory and I ate."

"There's no coffee left and I'm not making another pot just for you."

"That's fine."

He gave her an incredulous look and glared at her from behind the protective barrier of the counter. That counter had been his savior so many times over the past four and a half years since he'd met the whirlwind of a woman and been subjected to her many different moods and bits. It had been dirty in times when she'd frustrated him to the point where only the rag he dragged across its surface had stopped him from strangling her, it had stood its ground when he'd been tempted to try to walk right through it and sweep her up in his arms and steal her breath with his lips, and it had held him up when she'd unwittingly broken his heart time and time again.

"Then why are you here?" he demanded warily, knowing he was too tired to keep up with her peculiar brand of insanity.

She tipped her chin up at him and gave him a tragically small ghost of a smile as she lifted her shoulders up around her ears before letting him fall back down. He could read the shade of blue of her eyes and he knew she wasn't as happy as she should have been the night before her wedding.

"I was just feeling a little lonely."

"And you came here? Where's Rory?"

"At home, giving me space."

"Space? Why on Earth do you need space?"

Instinctively Lorelai opened her mouth to respond but she closed it again a few heartbeats later when she realized that for once in her life she didn't know how to explain herself. She didn't have the words to describe the overwhelming feeling of change holding her head under the murky water of the lake or why change even felt that way to her. Didn't brides normally feel giddy and excited if for no other reason than the thrill of hooking the rows of tiny buttons up the back of a pearl white cloud and hiding glowing cheeks behind yards of lace? Lorelai didn't know why those feelings had mutated into a dull panic that seized her insides and held on tightly enough to make her slightly nauseous all the time. Without a better answer, she once again lifted her shoulder high and let them fall back limply.

"Are you coming tomorrow?" she asked.

"Ah geez, I don't know…" he replied.

"Why not?"

"I have the diner, Lorelai. I can't just drop everything because you're getting married."

"Everyone who eats here will be there. It will be a ghost town in here. No one will notice if you close for a little while and come over."

"I… I can't."

"Why not?" she repeated.

"I just can't. Drop it."

"Why?"

His eyes widened slightly as he looked up at her, his jaw set firmly, and the towel he'd been using to clean his hands was twisted and pulled firmly between his hands. And in one moment of irritation, one moment of weakness he would later blame on heartache, Luke let spill a secret he'd been holding deep inside for four plus years.

"Because I can't put on a suit and a tie, go into that church, and watch you promise your mind, body, and soul to some pompous creep who reads three papers every morning all while pretending like it isn't a knife to my heart."

Lorelai inhaled sharply, noting the gallant return of the defective diaphragm, as she stared down the best friend she had outside of her daughter. With a short nod she slid off of the stool and headed back out into the crisp night air, realizing she now had a logical reason to feel as though her whole life was being turned around in not good ways.

Luke just watched her walk out of the front door with a fifteen pound boulder resting in the pit of his gut knowing he'd just taken a sledgehammer to his only real friendship.


	2. The Reflection of a Perfect Bride

Chapter Two- The Reflection of the Perfect Bride

Lorelai had to be shaken awake the next morning at eleven fifteen by an incredulous Emily who couldn't help but spit biting comments about the state of her bedroom or her lack of enthusiasm about her own wedding day. She was shoved into a chair in front of her vanity while the stylist hired by her mother came in and pulled and tugged and smoothed her riotous curls into an elegant chignon while the make up artist got work applying a layer of make up that was meant to look as though she was 'natural' and had just woken up looking like something off the front of a bridal magazine. She caught Rory's gaze in the mirror about halfway through the tedious and slightly painful progress and when her daughter offered her an encouraging smile Lorelai found she couldn't return the favor. Had someone asked she would have told them that her hair had been pulled too tight but as it was Emily shooed Rory out to get ready herself and the Gilmore matriarch didn't have time for such frivolities when there was a wedding to prepare for.

The time came for her to get suited up in the monster of a dress that Emily had chosen for her because she had been apathetic toward the whole dress issue. All Lorelai could think as the two hired hands carried all the yards of lace and silk toward her was that her debutant ball gown had come back to eat her alive. She stood in front of the full length mirror attached to the inside of her closet and held the front of the strapless bodice up as the woman who had done her hair used a tiny hook to pull the itty bitty buttons up the back of her dress through the equally tiny loops. Lorelai hardly recognized the woman standing before her, polished and drowning in a sea of pearl white fabric. The woman in the reflection was the perfect bride but all she could see was the sadness hidden in the depths of her eyes.

Apparently Emily saw it too.

"That'll do Deborah, Amanda. Go down and help my granddaughter with her hair and make up, now. Something appropriate for a sixteen year old."

Lorelai looked over her shoulder through the reflection in her mirror and caught her mother's piercing gaze as the two women ushered her daughter downstairs to gussy her up as well.

"What's wrong, Lorelai?"

"Nothing's wrong."

"You're lying to me. You never were a very good liar."

All she could do was shrug helplessly. How could she convey to her mother that the dress wasn't perfect and the day wasn't perfect and the man… the man wasn't perfect either? How could she stand there in all her pre-marital glory and say that she was making the biggest mistake of her entire life when her parents had gone to such great lengths to make it the wedding they'd always pictured for their little girl?

"Does he treat you right, Lorelai?"

"Yes."

"Does he make you happy?"

She hesitated. Max was a good man. He was smart, stable, and he liked Rory. He was eager to please and gave her whatever she wanted. He didn't always understand the nuttiness that was her pop culture references but he always smiled and nodded. He did whatever he could think of to fit into their lives, homes, and hearts and he'd succeeded as far as her daughter was concerned. But Lorelai couldn't help but recall the tension in her belly the first time she'd let him into her house and the voice in the back of her mind that told her that he didn't belong there. Or the discomfort that had kept her awake when he'd spent the night in her bed and forced her out of her own room and down into her daughter's. She considered the fact that there was passion between them but no chemistry; she didn't feel sparks when he kissed her.

And it didn't go without thought that she'd never once had an annoying voice in the back of her mind tell her that Luke didn't belong when she'd let him into her house for both practical and personal purposes. He'd always adored Rory and it was obvious that she could ask him to get her moon and he would do everything in his power to make it happen. He wasn't always up to speed on her references but he played along and held his own against her. He made his objections to her eating habits known without actually trying to change who she was. He'd never had to work at fitting into her life, her home, and yes… even her heart. He'd always fit and Lorelai couldn't help but wonder if his lips would have sparked like flint against hers.

"I… I don't know."

"Then you have a lot of thinking to do and not very much time to do it in."


	3. On the Same Wavelength

Chapter Three- On the Same Wavelength

Music swelled and filled the tiny church from the new organ bought with the money they'd raised from last summer's carnival as well as the rustle of an entire church full of people rising to their feet. Richard looked at his daughter's blank face and for a moment considered asking her if she was alright but the moment was lost when the commanding woman with the headset urged him to go. Lorelai was propelled into her first step down the isle by the gentle tug on her right arm and she found that as soon as she saw the smiling faces of everyone she'd ever known the dress began to cut off even more of her air supply.

That, however, was nothing compared to the sensation that she was asphyxiating that washed over her when she saw the man standing in his tuxedo at the end of the isle. She couldn't say why for a moment she'd wished it had been Luke standing right where Max was standing, smiling at her. That thought in and of itself was enough to worry her; why did she suddenly want her best friend to be the one she was going to vow her life to?

Panic rose into her throat and stuck there despite her best efforts to swallow it back down, further cutting off the supply of fresh oxygen to her lungs. She'd never really considered Luke to be dating material. He was her best friend, her coffee supplier, her shoulder to cry on, her Mr. Fix-It. She poked fun at his wardrobe and his monosyllabic tendencies. She demanded coffee from him and cajoled and harassed him until she got it. She broke down his resistance to pretty much everything with a tug on his arm and a bat of her eyelashes. She fought with him. She laughed with him. She even pseudo-flirted with him from time to time and she was pretty sure he pseudo-flirted back.

Maybe it hadn't been so pseudo on his end, she considered after recalling his outburst the night before when she'd been attempting to break his will on coming to her wedding. And maybe it hadn't been so pseudo on her end either. Her mind flashed an image of Luke smiling at her in the dark of the diner with the processional practicing out in the square. His eyes had been a fluid blue and his smile had almost been soft as he peered over at her and suddenly Lorelai knew he hadn't been lying when he'd said those things the previous night. What perturbed her even more than that was that the mental image of Luke's smile brought butterflies to the pit of her stomach where as the sight of Max smiling in the flesh made her queasy.

She felt herself slowing, trying to prolong the trip down the isle to give herself more time to think. Her arm was tugged forward, pulling her shoulder at an awkward angle and Richard had to slow himself and turn to look at his daughter whose face was still neutral but whose eyes were dancing with fear. He turned a questioning glance to his wife but her lips were thin and her face drawn, as if she already knew this was going to happen.

Max, aware that something was off with his bride-to-be, took a step forward at about the same time Rory did but Emily stood from her seat in the front pew and stopped them both from proceeding any further. She recognized that the last thing her daughter needed was someone else's opinion clouding her own. If she was going to make it down that isle she needed to be able to do it of her own accord, not because a sweet-faced sixteen year old and a silver tongued school teacher convinced her that it was the right thing to do. Lorelai's pace had slowed the point where it almost looked as though she was trying to go in reverse and Richard wasn't sure whether to hold onto her tighter or let her go all together.

"Lorelai?" Max questioned.

"Lorelai, are you quite alright?" Richard asked.

"Mom?" Rory called.

Lorelai's eyes darted quickly from face to face of those calling to her, trying once again to find the words necessary to explain why she couldn't force her feet to carry her to the end of the isle. A part of her was aware of the spectacle she was making in the middle of the church in front of so many familiar faces and so many ones that were supposed to be familiar. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air on the desk of a boat and her lungs burned with the air she wasn't taking in. She yanked her arm free of her father's and pressed a hand to her stomach, trying to breathe and think at the same time, something proving to be quite difficult. The sarcastic part of her brain told her that she would never again make fun of Julia Robert's character in _The Runaway Bride_ and that she might as well adopt the nickname Maggie right then and there.

She lifted helpless and panicked eyes to her mother's and silently begged her for help, for a way out of this situation that had her confined like a bear in a trap. Emily gave the slightest of nods as if she understood the way her daughter felt and for a single moment, for the first time possibly in either of their lifetimes, mother and daughter were on the same wavelength.

"Run," she whispered.

Lorelai needed no further encouragement.


	4. Like Hail on a Window Pane

Chapter Four- Like Hail on a Window Pane

Luke was sitting in his father's old leather arm chair, nursing a beer as he stared blankly at the little dots of light that were scattered across the floor from the spaces between his blinds. He knew that just across the square there was a wedding going on and the woman he'd lusted and loved for years was promising to love another man for the rest of her natural life. It made the bile rise in his throat and unwelcome tears sting the corners of his eyes. He couldn't believe he'd actually had the hope that one o'clock would come and go but Lorelai wouldn't climb out the back of some overpriced limo with enough fabric to clothe an entire starving tribe in New Guinea and head into that church with her father leading the way. But she had; he'd seen it all from his window before he'd pulled the shades closed and sunk despondently into the comfortable old chair that his father had spent the last years of his life lounging in. He couldn't help but think that he was going to die exactly the same way.

He'd lifted the dark glass to his lips to polish off the last swig of beer when the door to his apartment flung open, startling the bottle right out of his hand. It shattered loudly, flinging shards of broken glass all over the floor around his chair. Instinctively he'd jumped to his feet with his blood speeding through the veins in his brain, carrying adrenaline like kids in inner tubes down those giant slides at water parks. He was prepared to handle almost everything except for what had come barreling through his door.

There stood Lorelai Gilmore with a couple wild curls floating away from the knot at the base of her neck and her chest rising and falling so rapidly that the practical part of his brain reminded him that she was going to hyperventilate if he didn't get her a bag or calm her down. But he stood immobile not ten feet away from his dream girl, watching her melt down.

"Get it off," she pleaded, spurring him back into reality.

"Get what off?"

"This dress. I can't breathe."

He crossed the room and moved to stand behind her. A line of at least thirty or forty miniature buttons glared up at him and his large fingers fumbled with the top one, unable to slip it from its miniature loops of silk. With every second he wasted trying to undo even a single button, Lorelai's breathing only continued to quicken as she started to panic.

"Luke! Get it off!"

"Will you chill out? These damn buttons are too small."

"Oh my God, please, just get it off."

"Is it too tight?"

Though as soon as he asked the question he knew that it wasn't; her mother would have made sure to have the dress altered and re-altered again and again. There was no reason why this dress should have been hindering her breathing. Starting to get desperate, Lorelai bent her arm at a painful angle and started clawing at the buttons with nails polished a perfect pink, trying to undo even one of the oppressive closures. Luke batted her hands away twice before he finally grabbed her by a shoulder and spun her around to face him.

"How attached are you to this dress?"

Lorelai looked up at him with an expression he'd never seen turned his way from her before, her eyes a shade of blue he hadn't identified. It wasn't the blue of a summer sky that signaled she was happy, it wasn't the blue-gray of a winter's sky that was sadness, it wasn't the dark blue of the sky after the sun went down past the horizon and took the pinks, purples, and oranges with it that signaled her anger. Her eyes were the color of a gas flame, bright blue and almost as fluid and active as the flame itself was and Luke had yet to figure out what that color meant.

"Get it off," she pleaded on a whisper.

He nodded and turned her back around. He gathered the stiff fabric of the bodice on either side of those buttons and pulled as hard as he could. Tiny seed buttons rained down on the hardwood, plinking softly like hail on the window pane. Luke stepped past her, willing himself not to look at her as she hastily shoved the fabric down her body. He opened his closet and pulled out one of his flannel shirts and a pair of his sweatpants from his dresser and held them out behind him, trying to give her privacy.

A few moments later she cleared her throat loudly and Luke turned to find her practically swimming in his shirt and clutching the sweatpants to her chest. He arched an eyebrow at her, curious as to why she was only half dressed.

"They don't stay on my hips," she said.

He nodded shortly and tipped his hat up as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"So… do you want to sit down and tell me why you're up here and not across the street getting married?"


	5. Hardly a Whisper

Chapter Five- Hardly a Whisper

Lorelai smoothed the cuff of the flannel between her fingertips, taking in for the first time how soft the material was. She'd touched Luke a number of times in the four odd years since she'd met him and never once had she appreciated quite how comfortable his favorite shirts were. The naughty part of her whispered that it would be so much better pulled over his biceps or spread over his broad chest. For the first time in days she actually felt a smile trying to creep across her face. She'd been forcing them into place to appear as normal as possible but the ease of a natural smile almost surprised her.

Luke cleared his throat from across the room and she raised her gaze up from the cuffs hanging far over her fingertips to meet his eyes. He'd asked her a question that she wasn't sure she had the answer to just yet. So instead of even trying to find the answer in the dark of her mind she just handed off the sweat pants as she passed him on the way over to the window.

She used a finger to part the blinds, granting her a sliver of a window out into the rest of the square where the people who had gathered to attend her wedding were spilling out of the church. Rory, Max, and her parents were huddled near the limo off to the side of the church. It was too great of a distance to read either her daughter or mother or father's expressions but Max, his mood was all too apparent. His face was slowly turning the color of a ripe summer tomato and his arms were being flung around, seemingly to accentuate his every word, but without those articulate words at what she was certain was a high volume to go along with it, his gesticulating just made him look like one of the excitable monkeys at the zoo.

She felt Luke's presence at her back before she heard anything. He said nothing as he leaned over her to look out of the small space in the blinds with her and Lorelai had to resist the immediate temptation to lean back into him. Raising a hand to her mouth, she stuck a thumbnail between her teeth and began to use her lower teeth to pick off the blush pink polish that she'd let her mother talk her into.

"He's pissed," he said quietly. Lorelai felt the words rumble their way under her skin rather than just listening to them normally.

"Yeah," she agreed.

Luke hovered over her and she knew he wasn't looking out of the window any longer and while her eyes were trained in that direction, she saw nothing. Her senses were on high alert as she tried to drink in his presence through every pore on her body. Every hair on her body stood at attention, making her hyper aware of exactly where his body wasn't touching hers and she swore she could hear his heartbeat filling her ears. Or was that her own? She couldn't be sure anymore. She removed her finger and let the two blades of the blinds fall back into place but she couldn't tear her eyes away. Lorelai knew that if she turned and looked at him with his face so close she was going to lose herself in her best friend and her life was already spiraling so far out of her control that she needed to be able to grasp onto one tiny little thing.

His mind was working an overhaul trying to figure out her motive for showing up on his apartment, demanding his help in removing her wedding dress when she was supposed to be breaking his heart. He felt like his skin was going to get up and walk off of his own body but he refused to push her because he knew her well enough to know she did everything in her own way at her own pace and pushing her would do absolutely nothing but serve to further frustrate the hell out of him.

They both remained transfixed in their spots, barely daring to breathe, for a full ten minutes before Lorelai finally found her voice.

"I couldn't marry him," she whispered at his shades.

"He likes me, loves me even, but not for everything that I am. He wants me to eat my vegetables but he doesn't just want it, he expects me to do it. He wants me to suddenly share how I raise my kid and he expects me to just give in and change all the rules to something he agrees to. He reads three papers every morning and he expects me to do the same. He's a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and Rory and I wanted him to fit, we did, but he doesn't. He doesn't fit and it isn't right and I can't marry him."

Luke felt that dead weight he'd been carrying around in his intestines start to dissipate with every word that fell from her lips. There were so many things he still wanted to know and a lot of those things had to do with everything he'd confessed less than twenty-four hours before and how that fit into all of her musing. His brain was zipping around the inside of his skull so fast that he almost missed the next thing that came out of her mouth.

"When I looked to the end of the isle today I actually expected to see you there. Not in the pews with Babette and Miss Patty and all the other townies, but there, at the other end of the isle."

It was hardly a whisper but she might as well have screamed it for how quickly the nerves began to claw holes in her innards. She'd expected the centimeter of air between the curves of their bodies to stiffen when he realized how big of a whack job she was. What kind of woman pictured someone she'd never even kissed at the receiving end of the wedding march during her own wedding to another man? Crazy women, that's who. The kind of women that men avoided like the plague because getting sucked into their insane little world was like a never ending carnival of horrors where the clowns had bloody fangs and every tunnel of love came with a father-in-law holding a shot gun and six screaming infants.

Instead, she felt him relax fractionally as he exhaled quickly, as if he'd been holding his breath or something.

"Thank God."


	6. Having the Reasons Why

Chapter Six- Having the Reasons Why

"Thank God?" Lorelai parroted back over her shoulder.

Luke immediately straightened his spine and began to back peddle. He hadn't meant that he was glad she felt so miserable or that the schmuck she'd almost married was miserable or that it had been a good idea to run out of her own wedding. After all, a lot of people had had their hopes riding on that ceremony going smoothly, possibly even Lorelai herself and definitely Rory, and there was going to be a lot of hurt feelings all around.

"Aw geez, I didn't mean… well it's not like… I just…"

Lorelai turned and watched her best friend flounder for the right words to express himself. The back and sides of his neck was starting to turn red and that flush was creeping up towards the tips of his ears which seemed to make them brighter against the blue of his baseball cap. She had to draw her bottom lip in between her teeth to keep the laughter that was bubbling up from her belly like the fizz from a shaken soda bottle. No matter how twisted and confused her heart was, she would always take some perverse pleasure in watching him get flustered with his own words. It was probably why he tended to stick to the single syllable words when dealing with her; she was a professional mocker by nature.

She finally decided to put an end to his misery by closing the small space between them and placing a hand to his chest, just over his heart. Startled, his string of nonsensical words halted abruptly, mid-vowel, and he swallowed thickly as he looked down to the face that still refused to meet his.

"You didn't like that I was getting married, right?" she whispered.

"Right," he confirmed, matching her volume.

"And you didn't like that I was getting married because you like me, right?"

"Wrong."

She removed her hand quickly, as if the soft flannel warmed by his body heat had suddenly turned to a cold, wet lump of algae from the lake. He immediately regretted his choice of wording when he saw her retreating into her shell, drawing in those emotions that she so rarely let out and locking them away in the deepest, darkest recesses of her being. Reaching out, desperate to form that connection again, he grasped her upper arms, holding them tightly between his hands and ducking his head to get her to look at him. When she continued to avoid his eye and resisted his advances by remaining completely impassive and tense in his hands, he tried to reach her vocally.

"Ask me why."

"What?"

"Ask me why that statement was wrong."

Her eyes narrowed as she tilted her chin up to allow her gaze to sweep his face, looking for the indications that he was trying to trick her into further making a fool of herself. She found nothing, which was no real surprise to her considering that he was the kind of man who would sooner hurt himself than purposely hurt her. Frowning, Lorelai decided to play along with whatever game he was trying to play.

"Why?"

"Because I don't like you," he said, watching her flinch slightly, "I love you."

Immediately the tension he'd felt defying his touch drained out of her muscles and her eyes opened wide from the narrow slits she'd closed them to as they turned that gas flame blue all over again. He watched her eyes dart back and forth as she studied his face with an intense expression and he held his breath, waiting for her pull her arms out of his grasp and run away from him just like she'd run away from Max. To him it felt like hours before she finally moved even a fraction of a centimeter, to her it was no longer than the beat of a heart.

"You love me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why do you love me? We've never been on a date, I've never kissed you. So then why do you love me?"

"Do I have to have a reason?"

"Yes."


	7. Like a Live Telephone Wire

Chapter Seven- Like a Live Telephone Wire Disconnected from its Line

He gaped at her openly for a moment, hoping that she was going to drop her determined, almost combative stance. When thirty seconds passed in silence he knew he wasn't going to get out of having to explain why it was he had fallen in love with the woman staring him down from right under his nose. The pressure of trying to find the right way to express everything he'd been collecting in his heart for years upon years sent him into a tight pace, making use of the confined space between the kitchen table and the countertop. He was a man of few words and she was practically her own running commentator for every event in her life from weddings to toe nail polish. How was he supposed to reach that level of verbosity for even five minutes?

She remained right where he'd left her and watched him stalk back and forth in the corner of his apartment like a tiger at the zoo feeling threatened by the noise and presence of so many people around its caged environment. She said nothing, afraid he would pounce if she startled him. Finally he came to an abrupt halt and lifted stormy eyes up to hers, making her belly clench with the intensity she found in those ocean blue depths.

"Lorelai, I shouldn't have to tell you what an amazing person you are. Selfless, caring, affectionate… give me a thesaurus and I could go on forever finding words that describe you. I fell in love with you for two different reasons. First with how great of a mother to Rory you've been. It couldn't have been easy going through what you went through and yet you've come out on top-"

"But my being a mother has nothing to do with you," she interjected.

"Do you want to hear this?"

"Yes."

"Then shut up and let me get it out."

She made a motion as if to pull a zipper tab across her lips, signaling that she was shutting up and giving him the floor once again. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling because that was what was expected of him in these exchanges; she did something weird and he acted or actually was annoyed by her antics.

"Where was I? Oh, right. The second was the friendship you forced onto me. You make it so I have something to look forward to every day when you come barging into my diner with your anecdotes to make me laugh and the vein on my forehead to stick out. Your weird personality brings color to my day and over time I guess I just… fell in love," he finished, feeling a little lame.

He watched her sheepishly, waiting for some kind of response to the baring of his innermost soul; it might not have been poetry or preceded by thousands of little yellow flowers but he thought he'd done a pretty good job of getting his point across. He knew Max could write her sonnets and ballads about how beautiful and wonderful she was and just how much he loved her but considering she'd just run from that in what looked like a ten ton wedding dress, Luke had to wonder how much all of that really meant to her.

And it didn't mean that much to her. She knew she had more than enough words for everyone she met any then some. It wasn't so much the words anymore, but the meaning behind those words. When Max told her that he loved her he was really saying that he liked who she was enough to want to spend the rest of his life trying to mold her into what he considered to be the perfect woman. And here was Luke, using the same words but he was really telling her that he wanted to be with her because of who she already was, that he essentially wanted to spend the rest of his life with the woman standing in his living room barefoot wearing his flannel.

She took pity on his obvious nerves that were making him twitchy and active like a live telephone wire disconnected from its line, jumping and trembling in the street. Lorelai approached him slowly, giving him time to change his mind and back away, then replaced the hand she'd held over his heart. The rhythm beat a strong and somewhat erratic tempo against the pads of her fingertips, a beat that quickened as her palm came to rest against his chest as well. His hand came up to covers hers lightly, as if he were afraid that too much pressure would cause her to turn and bolt for the door. But instead of running, she simply dragged her sight up from the hypnotizing pattern woven into his flannel and up to his eyes.

"Why did you want it to be me at the end of the isle, Lorelai?" he asked tentatively.

"Because you fit."

"I fit?"

"You've never had to work to fit into my life. You've always just fit."

"So you wanted me to be the one you married because I fit?"

"Yes. No. Sort of. I hadn't dared to actually think about you like **that** before your little confession the other night because you've always fit so well. I'd been too scared to let you be a contender. What if by dating you I warped your shape from the perfect round shape to something oval? I couldn't take that. No, correction; I **can't** take that. I need you in my life, Luke, even if it is just as a friend. I never needed anyone until Rory came and I never needed anyone else until I met you. I've always loved you as a friend and I think a part of me, a part I'd locked away and sealed off, has loved you as more for some time. I just didn't have the key to unlock that tower until you said something."

"So you wanted me to be the one you married because you love me?"

"I'm not one hundred percent yet, but I'd like to have the chance to find out. Is that alright?"

"I'm good with that."

For the first time Luke dipped his head down, his eyes drifting shut, and let his lips brush against her waiting ones. He was testing the waters like a child at the swimming pool who stuck only their big toe in to check the temperature. It was the faintest of touches, a ghost of a kiss, and yet Lorelai was pretty sure she could have shocked a dying man back to life with the electricity passing between their lips. It was the first kiss of what promised to be many over the course of their relationship.

Luke had his girl and Lorelai… Lorelai finally remembered what it was to just breathe.

_Fin._


End file.
